Kairos Collective: Reengaging with Faith
I didn’t know what to expect when I walked through the door of Blues Egg, a popular diner located a few miles west of downtown Milwaukee. Although I’d been there many times before to enjoy their breakfast spread, this evening I walked in long after the restaurant had closed.
The front lights were dimmed, and the front door was held open by a wooden stopper. Walking past a case of pastry labels and then a curated selection of tap handles (typical for Wisconsin), I made my way to the back dining area, where about fifteen folks had begun to take a seat around tables that were pushed together, forming a shared space to host our meal and conversation. At each seat was a set of papers detailing the liturgy for the evening, a selection of Bible passages from different translations, and a list of upcoming opportunities.
As introductory conversations began to slow, Mark Fraley, a long-time community organizer, welcomed everyone to the Kairos Collective.
Liturgical Tradition
Christians have participated in liturgies of shared worship for over two thousand years. Across time and place, these gatherings have taken many forms: from secret, underground communities to the spectacle of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City. In America, the practice of Christian worship has often looked like a gathering on Sunday morning to sing, learn, participate, confess, and commune with fellow believers.
Across this long history of practice, Christians have occupied the great halls of power and stood at the farthest margins of society. Christianity has been wielded by the oppressor and oppressed, the empire and the persecuted, the abuser and abused. As theologians like Willie James Jennings and historians like Kathryn Gin Lum have documented at length, often Christians in power would deem their theologies and practices as the purest and most true. In return, they deemed the religions and faiths — including practices of Christianity that had arrived long before them — as “heathen.”
The consequences of this dynamic have rippled through history and into American history. Think of enslaved Africans, who were taught a version of Christianity from their white Christian masters that condoned systems of chattel slavery. And yet, think also of preachers like Jerena Lee, Jupiter Hammon, and Lemuel Haynes who preached and practiced a Christianity that placed God on the side of the oppressed. Think also of those who followed: Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman, John Perkins, and many others who rejected the rituals, liturgies, and teachings of Christians who claimed God did not care for or about them.
Today, this project of separating the good, long-held practices of Christianity tradition from the abusive actions within and behind our institutions continues. As American Christians reckon with the many forms of abuse it has perpetuated, many have asked themselves which parts of their faith are complicit in these evils. In response, some people are leaving faith behind altogether as they move into what sociologist Ryan Burge has popularly deemed the “nones.”
However, often missed in this discussion are the Christians who’ve left their congregations but who do not want to abandon their faith for secular solutions or try to replace their spiritual community for a secular one. These overlooked believers want to hold on to the core commitments of their faith while also working towards justice, love, kindness, and community. Like many Christians before them, they are searching for what lies at the core of their faith when all the practices, trappings, and beliefs handed down by systems of and people in power are stripped away. They see the value of their faith, but want a worshiping community that is doing church differently.
That’s where Kairos Collective comes into the picture.
Kairos Collective: A Sacred Community
Kairos Collective began in 2021 after Mark Fraley, a long-time community organizer in Milwaukee, graduated from McCormack Theological Seminary in Chicago. Meeting with neighbors across the city of Milwaukee, Mark saw a crucial need for a worshiping community that could reimagine how church is done — a church that brought Christian faith back to its core as congregants examined their faith in the freedom to question, doubt, and push back. Drawing from his decades of organizing experience across America, Mark got to work assembling a core team of leaders in Milwaukee to create a worshiping initiative that saw their community and the people in it as sacred beings with the potential to change the world. Together, they created a sacred community centered around three pillars: Contemplative prayer, relationships, and just action.
“We need more love in the world. We need brave people crossing the fractures in our communities which separate us,” writes Mark. “We need risk-takers striving for a stronger community, knowing we will fail repeatedly. We need people willing to slow down and listen to one another in a world obsessed with speed and productivity. We need more sharing and less selling. We need more listening and less telling. We need a world which honors and celebrates the meek and the humble.”
The Kairos Collective — “Kairos” for short — is a church. It is not a book group, casual social gathering, or membership-based club. And as a church, Kairos centers sacred-rooted solutions to the issues Milwaukee residents face by gathering, organizing, and mobilizing people toward shared learning and action. Furthermore, as a church, Kairos seeks to meet a need that secular solutions fall short of by building a communal tapestry or mosaic that interweaves the lives of Kairos’ congregants together in a shared goal of flourishing in Christ and with others. In other words, Kairos holds together a desire to create spiritually grounded community with a fervent commitment to seeking justice in and a common good for the city of Milwaukee.
Kairos: Time and Seasons in Action
The monthly practices of Kairos help congregants live into this threefold vision of faithful prayer, beloved community, and shared action. There are often gatherings around a dinner table where neighbors join together to sing, break bread, and discuss where they are finding and making meaning in our world. Kairos hosts small groups to learn about practices like contemplation and mindfulness that, in return, train people to lead the broader community. On Saturday morning, you will find a faithful cohort of Kairos members serving at the Kinship Community Food Center — an urban farm and food pantry. Kairos even organizes public gatherings with local leaders across Milwaukee who are centering the sacred in their work. Over the past year, these “Living Faith” events have featured community organizers, long-time journalists, small business owners, and local pastors.
In these rituals, Mark and Kairos are clear about the sacred source of healing and organizing power for this community: Jesus. The liturgies of gathering, prayer, and just action are rooted in a sincere emulation of the life and ministry of Jesus recorded in the Christian scriptures. Mark loves Jesus, and wants you to love him too. But unlike pushy evangelists or all-too-sincere pastors, Mark’s hope for others to love what he loves shows up most clearly in his desire to serve and care for others.
The very name of Kairos attests to this sacred framing and deep love. Kairos is a Greek term found in the writings that comprise the Christian scriptures, but also across the writings of philosophers like Aristotle. Etymologically, this word simply designates a measure of time that is fixed and definite. At a deeper level, though, Kairos is set against a more familiar term: Chronos. Whereas the latter describes the time marked by the hands of a ticking clock or the countdown of a stopwatch, Kairos speaks more abstractly to seasons of time. It is the sense of, as the Hebrew poet of Ecclesiastes writes, “a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted…a time to break down and a time to build up…a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together.”
As Mark explains, “We hold up Kairos — ‘God time’ — as a reality which we want to pay attention for, to be attuned to, and to follow Jesus in a way that lives into those moments.”To live in this intentional community of practice within Kairos — through these seasons of life — is deeply transformative work. It shapes both individuals and communities.
This is the transformation that the Kairos Collective seeks for the city of Milwaukee. Grounded in the core practices of contemplation, relationships and just action, Kairos Collective, Mark explains, “strives to live out Jesus’ command to love God with our heart, mind, and soul and to love our neighbors as ourselves, with an understanding that everything else depends on this.”
As the Kairos community continues to grow at every gathering, they are developing partnerships with local organizations like Common Ground, who have created monumental change in Milwaukee, organizing public housing tenants and reforming the city’s housing authority. You will also find members of Kairos up the road at Zao MKE, an openly LGBTQ+ church, Wauwatosa Presbyterian, a small traditional congregation, and Lamb of God, a historic Black church rooted in the Missionary Baptist tradition.
Wherever Kairos is present, you will find Christians leading in love as they foster a sacred community of deep belonging for all who desire to join.
By Amar Peterman